Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I welcome the Minister to the House. Is breá an lá é i gcónaí nuair a bhíonn sí inár dteannta. The Minister is correct about the Commission and the unfortunate representative negotiating on our behalf. I regret that he springs from the same political tradition as I, which I cannot understand, explain or justify. His political views are to the right of those of most members of the Christian democratic tradition in mainland Europe. His views on the use of war and state terror are more in conformity with those of President Bush than any Member of the Oireachtas. I compliment the Minister on making it clear that we will not be bounced. The same gentleman made the mistake of underestimating our present Minister for Finance when they dealt with each other on Northern Ireland affairs and I suspect he has discovered the same about our Minister for Agriculture and Food. If not, I hope he will.

Like Senator O'Toole, I believe the farming organisations bear considerable responsibility in this matter, which is a pity. From the time we joined the EEC, the mantra of the farming organisations had much in common with King Canute. They sat and said: "The tide will not come in because we say it will not come in." Strategic thinking means carefully examining issues that are far away and reducing one's inspection of matters that are up close. It was manifest to anyone who examined the CAP when we joined the EEC that the only question was how short a time would it be before it became fundamentally impossible to operate.

One does not need to be a neo-liberal economist to realise that if one guarantees prices to everyone all of the time for all of their production, something will give. It is a great pity that a country that has and had inherent comparative advantages in the production of high-quality agricultural products charged down a road of poor quality and vast quantity in return for guaranteed prices. Very little was done. Senator O'Toole is correct to a considerable degree. It was not the fault of the political leadership in agriculture, although I have not seen much imagination in the official side of agriculture other than the defence of the maximum payments to the maximum number of farmers, which was fine for a time but could not have lasted.

We must be wary of those who are the most enthusiastic about the free market, people who are usually never exposed to it. I am not allowed to mention names but I will start with the most eminent Irish man in the area of trade and so forth. He began in a profession that was a closed shop, was appointed — not elected — to high political office, was then appointed to an even higher political office, was appointed as the director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, and was finally appointed without competition to his present eminent position. He has never experienced a competitive market in his life but now believes it would be good for everyone else. Of itself, this is sufficient reason for anyone to be wary of enthusiasts for market liberalism, those who say: "It is good for everybody else but we have reasons not to be exposed to it."

For reasons relating to their admirable qualities, farmers have been seduced into believing they are the epitome of the free market when, in its best form, Irish and European agriculture represents a social democratic managed model of a humane economy, in which one balances the needs for quality and decent standards for those who work in the industry, either in the production or processing side. Even with its faults, the CAP is much better to those who work in the industry than the brutal agriculture practised in what is often called, and is in many ways, the underdeveloped world.

It is unfortunate that farmers were seduced into believing this as they could have looked elsewhere for political protection. I endeavoured to explain this to several members of the IFA last Wednesday night but neither I nor they were at their most coherent. However, I have vigorously made the point to the IFA that it should be careful not to celebrate the dilution or weakness of trade unions. If the influence of trade unions is diminished, it is inevitable that the diminution of the influence of organisations such as the IFA or others will follow. One cannot have a society in which some people are treated to the full brute force of the marketplace yet expect that other people should not. Whatever our exchanged words, we are all in this together. If we do not agree on institutions that protect people from the brutalities of the marketplace, we will all be exposed to it except, of course, the eminent individual to whom I referred earlier.

I am intrigued by how the entire economics profession in this country managed not to notice the Common Agricultural Policy, presumably because so many fat contracts came from the IFA. Economists would not say what they normally would have, what they are now saying about the partnership process, such as it is an inhibition to efficiency and so forth. I know why they did not say this about the CAP. The IFA is a good employer of economists and it would therefore be foolish to say anything. As I have said over the years, the CAP is a good idea but we need to examine its costs and benefits. One cost is that many consumers are paying more than they probably would in a world market. There are down sides to this argument, which I will address shortly.

It is a fact that the profession of economics, which spent its life in the 1980s shooting at the unemployed, for example, and demanding that welfare benefits be cut so that people would be forced out to work, managed to blissfully ignore the market distortions of the Common Agricultural Policy. I support many of these distortions. I have no ideological beliefs one way or another about the market. It is sometimes useful and sometimes a cruelty imposed on people.

In this context, I remember a meeting of the Joint Committee on European Affairs at which an eminent leader of the IFA, who is closer to the House now than he was then, managed to speak for 45 minutes about what needed to be done on behalf of farmers but did not mention the market or consumers. This was quite an achievement for someone who was in the business of producing that which people must buy.

Any strategic plan for agriculture in Ireland must deal with two issues, namely, what should we do to generate a way of dealing with food that is good for consumers and what gives a maximum income for farming. The IFA and most of the other farming organisations run away from the issue of income distribution within agriculture, for example. Where does the income go? Probably 80,000 or 90,000 people will march up and down the streets to defend a position which makes 5% of farmers extremely well off and leaves the rest of them just about surviving. There is a significant question, particularly when one is talking about large-scale State support, about the distribution of that State support between people who are barely surviving and people who are living in a style to which only directors of Irish Ferries are accustomed.

Another question I have asked a succession of Ministers concerns REPS. Part of the Department of Agriculture and Food's responsibility is to ensure that we do not engage in intensive agriculture. The question I have asked about REPS is not how many farmers are involved, but what proportion of the total acreage in farming is involved and what proportion of our agricultural production comes from farms fully involved in the REPS. I have asked a few Ministers that question and I have never got an answer. I know there are approximately 30,000 farmers involved but are they real farmers, farmers mar dhea or part-time farmers. The really interesting question concerns how much of our agricultural production comes from farms involved in REPS.